There will be no delivery truck pulling up to the White House next month to unload freshly printed copies of President Bush’s fiscal 2009 budget proposal, which is likely to total more than 2,000 pages.

The White House estimates it would need to order more than 3,000 copies of the books this year in order to provide copies to its own staff, lawmakers and the news media as it has done in the past.

Instead, it will send those eager readers to an Office of Management and Budget Web site on Feb. 4, the day Bush will submit his new budget to Congress.

The move is an effort to save money and spare some trees, budget director Jim Nussle said Wednesday. “This step will save nearly 20 tons of paper, or roughly 480 trees,” Nussle said in a statement. “In terms of fiscal savings, we estimate the E-Budget will save nearly a million dollars over the next five years.”

For those who just can’t live without the paper version, the four-volume set can still be ordered from the Government Printing Office. But Nussle urged all potential readers to embrace the E-Budget.

The budget has been online for several years, but this year OMB is hoping to publicize its availability more effectively.